What Jack Welch means by that is that all business revenue lines eventually lead to zero. Think about the graveyards of businesses: Blockbuster. Kodak. Borders. Myspace.

We can never rest on a single revenue line.

But how? What is the right market? What business ought we be in? What products and services will define the future?

Here’s a quick and easy way to get some instant feedback on what’s next.

Using a SEM/SEO keyword tool like Google Keyword Planner or Sem Rush, look at search keywords to identify future market trends. What’s interesting are the long tail keywords, down the list in the twenty-five spot or the fifty-spot depending on keyword volume. That’s where things get interesting and opportunities are identified.

Let’s look an example: beer.

Say we want to innovate in the beer market. The keyword “Beer” gets over 1.3M searches a year. Let’s look at some of the long tail keywords that are insightful in identifying new markets.

Root Beer: 27K per month
Root Beer is trending up strongly. Diversify up market with a craft, non alcoholic play?

Nonalcoholic beer: 18K per month
A lot of interest in nonalcoholic beers – could be another way to diversify up market.

Beer cheese dip: 18K per month
License your beer brand and recipie to a company making cheese products? Yum.

Sapporo Beer: 15K per month
Sapporo is a rice beer, so perhaps this is a health trend showing demand for beers that avoid gluten? A gluten free beer?

Grapefruit Beer 12K
Grapefruit beer is a German type that further fits into the health trend. It’s 2% alcohol and even has vitamin C.

If you are in the beer business, those are some great ideas. I developed those ideas in a few minutes, so a bit more time and testing could yield significant dividends. And if you do happen to end up in the dustbin of history, have a beer and get back to the Keyword Drawing Board!

If you want some help identifying new markets, let Viewstream know. We would love to help.

One other thing: once you have a new product identified, use this handy tool to define your market position.

We were recently asked to do a marketing audit by an investor of a troubled startup.

We.Software*, a young company offering software design services to healthcare companies, set forth to conquer the world. They had set aside a marketing budget of 100K per year over three years. Three years went by, but they didn’t get the traction.

When going back and analyzing the marketing spend by their marketing agency (a boutique agency based in Seattle), we noted that a full forty percent of the budget went to pure design related assets, like logo, website design and document assets.

STOP.

If your agency wants to spend forty percent of a budget on design related assets, please find a new agency.

At the start of a company, lean and agile approaches means spending very little on design assets and more on customer research and product marketing (things that actually grow your business).

For a logo, use a crowdsourced asset for an inexpensive logo.

For a website, use a WordPress template.

As your company matures, there will be a place for more significant spend on design and brand assets.

In the meantime, here are things that maybe wise to spend your budget on:

Digital marketing for technology companies is fundamentally different than marketing for the non-technical industry. Although it sounds like a simple distinction, if we unpack it, we discover surprising insights.

A few months ago, I had some conversations at the digital marketing SoDA conference that opened my eyes to the differences between digital and traditional marketing ecosystems. I’ve been living in the tech industry so long, that a new perspective from outside the fishbowl was clarifying.

“As a digital marketer, what is the biggest challenge you face working with your clients?”

This seemed like an innocuous question when our workshop leader asked, but the answers I heard were surprising. Except for me, the unanimous answer was: We focus tremendous time and effort convincing clients to believe in digital-first marketing. Then we have to ensure that the digital-first approach is accepted and operationally integrated into the marketing organization.

Traditional methods of presenting new projects, whether it is a design for a new hospital, or the construction phases of a new office building, usually involve printed images and documents, videos with 3d animated flyarounds, or physical maquettes (miniatures) of the building.

Project leaders from firms rely on these methods to present everything from designs and analysis, to scheduling and cost to their clients and investors. Even though these methods work in terms of getting the information across, the overall engagement with the content being shown will always be limited by the quality of the material and the technology being used to present it.

AEC firms are just beginning to leverage VR for not only their internal practices, but for client-facing material as well. The value that VR brings is greater engagement through immersiveness. By allowing a viewer to see content as if it was actually there, walk around it and interact with it, presentations can be brought to a whole new level.

Using the right creative, strategy, and technology can make content more engaging. What we have done with the new Viewstream AEC VR Demo, is design and build an experience around a specific product, in this case a new construction presentation. We took what is a traditional method of presenting information, and reestablished how it is presented.

In the Viewstream virtual presentation, we showcase a variety of information that is both important and essential to this type of product, and we do it a way that is engaging for the viewer. Cost and scheduling, lighting and energy analysis, general neighborhood data, as well as full views of the new construction are some of the elements we find important to this industry. By creating a realistic, immersive, virtual experience around this concept of an architectural/construction presentation, we can engage the viewer and in turn deliver greater value.

Would you like to learn more about Viewstream and our VR services for the AEC industry, including checking out a demo? Email info@viewstream.com and a team member will get right back to you. Or complete our contact form.

As marketers, we embrace the expectation that we have to constantly come up with new, innovative methods for reaching target audiences. We love to come to work in the morning where every campaign needs to be a “game changer.” We strive to conjure up “purple cows” every day.

Marketing spend needs to go further to meet these elevated expectations. But in this new digital reality, how do you be both efficient and effective, and how do you differentiate your brand in a crowded marketplace where everything is presumed to be new?

Here is a preview of the six key trends that will dominate 2017 and allow marketers in the know to get ahead of the curve:

1. Customer data is skyrocketing as big campaigns plummet.

Data on customers or potential customers is readily available. Demographics, behavior, interests, browsing history, previous purchases, and on and on. All of this data can be used to deliver personalized, relevant content to individuals across any channel, leading to the death of the one-size-fits-all campaign. The days when marketers would do a long march towards a big campaign launch are over. We need to be executing daily, weekly or monthly campaigns that are consistently optimized and put into the world.

To discover the rest of the key trends, such as virtual reality and the future of email, download the report today.

Viewstream is excited to be bringing home some new hardware! Between the awards programs of the Telly Awards, Communicator Awards and Hermes Awards, Viewstream received nine.

The 37th Annual Telly Awards has awarded Viewstream five Bronze awards in the category of Online Video. With over 13,000 entries from all 50 states and numerous countries, this is truly an honor. The Telly Awards, a premier award honoring outstanding creative work in video and film productions and online commercials, recognized Viewstream for creative videos for Autodesk and ClearCare.

Two of those same videos each received Silver Awards of Distinction from the Communicator Awards, the international awards program honoring creative excellence for communication professionals.

Finally, the Hermes Creative Awards has presented Viewstream with two awards in the categories of Microsite and Interactive Capabilities. Our work with Autodesk Suite Recommender earned an Honorable Mention and the Autodesk InfraWorks Microsite earned the Platinum Award, the award given to those entries judged to be among the most outstanding in the competition.

We add these nine new awards of recognition to our collection of previous distinctions for our work with clients including Microsoft, Autodesk and Adobe. Thank you to all who helped us get here!

Getting marketing right requires a real understanding of why your product and company is unique. To help, Viewstream created a “Positioning Generator“. It’s the marketing team’s Mad Libs. Fill in the blanks based on the prompts provided and get your positioning statement. It’s sure to get you thinking, at least. This type of statement ought to be a default part of your messaging, communication and go-to market arsenal.

Succinctly said, the power of comic and graphic novels occur in between the panels. Between panel A and panel B, a world of curiosity, sensibility and feeling is unlocked. It’s not what is said or shown, it’s what is not said or shown that is unique.

Think about that from a marketing perspective. How many times do we try to say too much about our product, solution or brand?

Comic books teach us to think about what occurs “in between the panels”. Say and show something creative. Then let your audience imagine. Let your audience translate their needs and desires into something our offering delivers.

What would happen if, for your next marketing project, instead of saying everything, you left some things for ‘in between the panels’?

Viewstream is thrilled to receive top honors at the 36th annual Telly Awards. The Telly Awards, a premier award honoring outstanding creative work in video and film productions, online commercials, video and films has presented our agency with two accolades this year. Of the nearly 12,000 entries, Viewstream was recognized for its creative work supporting the products and brands of some of the largest companies in the world.

We received a Silver Telly Awards – the highest honor – for our work with Autodesk Seek in the Online Webisodes, Segments, or Promotional Pieces – Use of Graphics category.

We add these two new Silver recognitions to our collection of seven previous distinctions by the Telly Awards for our creative work in online videos for clients including Microsoft, Autodesk, Adobe and ERA Real Estate.

Viewstream was recently presented with two 2014 Telly Awards in the Art Direction category. Our video for ERA Real Estate revealed the location of their 2015 International Business Conference (IBC15) to their global community at IBC14 this past March in Los Angeles. The IBC15 Reveal video earned the highest honor of the Silver Telly Award. Additionally, a Bronze Award was presented for Viewstream work for Autodesk Point Layout in Internet/Online Video.

We were up against a lot of competition—12,000 entries from around the globe were submitted. Entrants included ad agencies, interactive agencies, production firms, in-house creative professionals, graphic designers, design firms and public relations firms. The winners were announced in New York on June 16.

All the work was judged by a panel of 500 Silver Telly Council members representing a variety of distinguished media, advertising and marketing firms. Each year, the council honors creative excellence for communications professionals across the world by recognizing the best in advertising, corporate communications, public relations and identity work for print, video, interactive and audio.

We’d like to congratulate all of our fellow Telly Award recipients and thank them for their important contributions to the industry.